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Wayne:  The argument you make in the first paragraph supports the  
Marin's article that is summaried - that our tendency to dismiss what  
we presume to be unscientific is in great part due to our cultural  
heritage.  (Remember, we are talking about language here - not the  
movie).  I found the article interesting because it suggests that the  
assumptions many of us have made about something we call "science vs.  
religion,'" in the modern context, is more complex in its origins  
than some dilettantes, like me, presumed.

Sorry if you took it to mean I was going all new-agey on the list- 
serv.  But I do buy Marin's argument that the translation of a  
theoretical framework from one language to another can be complicated  
by the constraints of language, that these initial complications can  
lead to distortion and/or misappropriation.
	


On Jun 9, 2009, at 7:01 AM, Wayne Watson wrote:

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>
> Myticism? Colored by language? This is beginning to sound a bit  
> like the "Quantum" movie from several years ago, which was shot  
> down by many physicists as nonsense, and panned as gobbledygook.  A  
> bit more serious attempt at tying physics into religion was made in  
> The Tao of Physics. Leon Lederman in his God Particle tore into  
> that idea in his chapter titled The Dancing Moo-Shu Masters.  
> Lederman ends the chapter with, "Physics is not religion. If it  
> were, we'd have a much easier time raising money."
>
> Here's something more to think about concerning reality and  
> science. In 1962 Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific  
> Revolutions rejected the notion that science was value neutral,   
> impersonal, and a true representation of reality. The claim was  
> that science was a social construct, dependent upon social and  
> political views. You might recall the 60s as a time of cultural  
> upheaval. A one-sided debate among supporters of that idea went on  
> for decades that dampened science in the view of the public and  
> many educators. In 1986, physicists Gingras and Schweber counter- 
> attacked this idea, which had been ignored by scientists. By 1996  
> the debate was in full swing, known then as the Science Wars, with  
> scientists on one side, and, on the other, historians, social  
> scientists, science philosophers and some intellectuals who were  
> challenging Western ideals and knowledge. By the end of the 1990s  
> the debate had pretty much run its course. The so-called  
> postmodernism view had pretty much run out of steam. See Steven  
> Goodman's Science in the Twentieth Century: A Social Intellectual  
> Survey, pub. The Teaching Co.
>
> -- 
>           Wayne Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
>
>             (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
>              Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
>                "The zero is something that must be  
> there                 in order to say that nothing is there."
>                -- Karl Menninger, Number Words and Symbols
>
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